She nodded.
He grabbed her hands, put her left on the rope near the belay device, her right on the rope further back.
“This belay device is your friend, your brake. When the rope is back here,” he touched her right hand to her hip, “you won’t move. When you raise it up, it’ll allow the rope to feed through. You’ll drop.”
Her heart was going like mad.
“Two things. Do not let your left hand get too close to the belay device. It’ll chew it up. You’ll let go and die.”
The radio crackled. “On my way, Matt. Say, did you ever send Mario down? He never showed, isn’t responding, over.”
Isaiah said, “Look in my eyes.” She did. “You go down in a sitting position. Control your speed.”
“I can’t do this.”
“You have to do this.” He helped her up onto the lip of the glass.
“I can’t,” she said.
“You been through worse than this. Put your right hand in the brake position.” She clutched it, held it to her hip. “You ain’t gotta squeeze so hard. Relax. Now lean back.”
“I can’t.”
“Stop saying that.”
“Matt, do you copy, over?”
“Lean. Back.”
She hung her ass out over the gaping darkness, her stomach turning itself inside out.
“Now raise your right hand slowly, until you feel the rope begin to glide through the belay device.”
“I—”
“Do it!”
“Matt, do you copy, over?”
She raised the rope off her hip.
Isaiah smiled at her from inside the room, said, “There you go, now let it slide through your grasp, but not too fast.”
She opened her fingers, felt the rope move through.
She dropped a foot.
“Keep it going,” Isaiah said, “and I hate to rush you, but I do need you to hurry the fuck up.”
She descended in erratic bursts.
The sensation of plummeting to her death never out of her mind.
Twenty feet below their window, she lowered past a room where the curtains had not been drawn. Glimpsed a couple watching television in bed less than ten feet away, their faced awash in high-def glow.
She ventured a glimpse down, surprised to see that she was already halfway to the ground. Lifting her right hand as far off her hip as she’d yet dared, she felt the rope streaming through her loosened grasp. The balls of her feet bounced off the windows. For a fraction of a second, it was almost fun.
She touched solid ground, her legs buckling, relief blazing through her veins.
Jerrod caught her before she fell.
They stood at the edge of a field of commercial AC units that were noisy as turboprops. He unscrewed her locking carabiner, ripped the rest of the rope through her belay device, and said, “She’s down, Ize. Let’s blow.”
Letty looked around—too dark to see much of anything beyond the fact that Stu and all but two of the bags were gone.
She was about to ask where he was when Isaiah hit the ground beside her.
She said, “Wow, you’ve done that a few times.”
“Once or twice.”
The men shouldered the last two duffels.
Jerrod led the way, threading between the roaring AC vents.
“How much time do we have?” Letty asked as they ran.
“They know something’s up. But we magnetized the lock in the suite. No keycard will get them through. Yelling for someone to let them in won’t get them through. They’ll have to break it down.”
“And then?”
She was having to shout to be heard.
“I don’t know,” he said. “The guards saw us go through the bedroom and disappear. I moved the marble quietly, but I’m guessing they’ll connect the dots in a hurry. Or else someone will spot us on this rooftop.”
“Cameras up here?”
“Possibly. Whether or not they catch us at this point will depend on how quickly they can lock down all exits from the property. And if they’ve conceived of a theft like this.”
They climbed over a four-foot wall.
Jerrod said, “Almost there.”
Letty spotted the shadow of Stu up ahead.
They reached him.
Isaiah and Jerrod let the bags slough off their shoulders. She peered over the ledge. The wall dropped six feet to the top level of a parking deck. A white Suburban idled below, the rear cargo doors thrown open.
The parking deck was well-lit, inhabited by a smattering of vehicles, but otherwise still and quiet.
“Your boy showed,” Isaiah said. He looked at Jerrod and Stu, said, “Homestretch. There will be cameras. Move like the wind, gentlemen.”
He hoisted a bag, swung it over the ledge, let it fall to the concrete on the other side.
The remaining bags followed.
Then the men.
Then Letty, climbing over last, letting her feet hang for a beat before dropping.
The Suburban’s rear seating had been removed.
Stu loaded the final duffel as Letty hurried around the back and climbed up into the front passenger seat.
She pulled off her mask and smiled at Christian.
“Good to see you again,” he said.
Ize and his crew piled in, doors slamming.
Isaiah said, “Christian, glad you could make it.”
Christian shifted into gear. “Where to?”
“Ninety-five north.”
Christian drove down the ramp into the parking garage.
A tense silence descending over the car.
After the second overly hard turn, Isaiah said, “Just drive cool, my man. This ain’t the movies. No one’s chasing us yet.”
Letty checked her iPhone—2:23.
Hard to believe that only twenty-three minutes had elapsed since the guards had walked into that suite. She’d worried enough in that time span for three lifetimes.
Each corner Christian turned ratcheted the knot in her stomach a little tighter.
Her hands trembled. She tried to steady them, but she was too amped.
She looked over, studied Christian. “You all right?” she asked.
He nodded, but he looked scared as hell.
The road out of the garage seemed to go on forever, like the Penrose stairs.
Turn.
After turn.
After turn.
Letty stared out the window, watching all the paint jobs of the cars gleaming under the harsh light.
Something reached her through the glass. She lowered her window two inches.
There it was—the screech of tires across smooth concrete.
She said, “Someone’s coming up fast.”
Jerrod said, “Ize? Should he pull into an open space? Let them pass?”
“Hell no. All likelihood, they got a vehicle description. We need to get the fuck out. Just drive, my man. And try not to crash.”
The screeching drew closer.
Letty heard Isaiah’s glass hum down, turned just in time to see him climbing up onto his knees, pointing an AR-15 through his window.
She buckled her seatbelt.
Christian took a hard, squealing turn.
A black Escalade ripped into view.
Isaiah opened up.
Three bursts on full auto, a smear of silver-rimmed holes starring the engine and driver side door of the Escalade. Its right-front tire blew. Christian gunned the Suburban, its back end jutting left, smashing into the side of the Escalade as it passed.
“Down!” Isaiah screamed.
The back window of the Suburban exploded in a splash of safety glass, bullets chinking into the cargo doors.
Christian cranked it around one last curve.
Letty saw them first—a black strip lying across the exit lane up ahead.
“Spikes!” she yelled. “Other lane!”
Christian steered over a six-inch concrete median with a violent shudder that seemed to tear apart the undercarriage. The entrance gate snapped off as they punched through and made a hard, blind turn into traffic.